BikeTown Africa: Great and Hidden Things

Great and Hidden Things

200 free bicycles designed to help health workers battle the AIDS pandemic. Our hope is the simplest and noblest vehicle can transform the world. If only it's given a chance to roll.

mark jenkins

Nine months later bicycling asked me to travel to Botswana and report on BikeTown Africa. I had high hopes. Botswana is the most politically stable country in Africa, having had a functioning democracy since it gained independence in 1966. It is also, according to the watchdog group Transparency International, the least corrupt nation in Africa, and has one of the continent's highest per capita incomes: $11,200 a year. I envisioned meeting dozens of people like Thomas Nkele. I wanted to write a story about how inevitable it is that bicycles transform societies when given a chance. Given all my time in Africa, I should have known better.

I first went to Africa 30 years ago. Traveling through the Algerian sahel I saw ancient Roman irrigation systems that once carried water hundreds of miles now buried in sand--the village women having reverted to hauling water on their heads. In Tunisia I met volunteers who had built a new school that couldn't open for lack of money to pay a teacher, the doors and window frames already torn out and burned for firewood. Ten years later I was working as a writer for the Associated Press and Time magazine in East Africa. I saw vast herds of Masai cattle destroy the Kenyan ecosystem, which, as a draw to tourists, was one of the tribe's primary sources of cash. I saw Ugandans sell their prescriptions and their mosquito nets to buy food, only to die of malaria or sleeping sickness. Ten years after that I wrote a book about West Africa. In Guinea I found new American tractors belly-deep in dirt, abandoned when they ran out of gas; in Sierra Leone I passed through thirsty villages and saw water pumps missing handles, which had been stolen to be used as clubs.

Africa is a continent of conundrums, contradictions and conflict. Misguided foreign aid and misanthropic missionaries, barbaric leadership and venal tribalism, all have combined to create a continent that is too often forced to eat its seed corn, then starve the next year.

I knew all this, but still...I am one of those who believe that the bicycle can change the world. I view the humble bike not only as a toy, but also, perhaps primarily, as a tool. I see the bike not merely as a symbol of childhood, but as an elegant, adult machine meant for empowering and improving humanity.

Upon arriving in Gaborone, I chose to visit the BOCAIP counseling facilities first. Its center in Kanye, a village two hours southeast of Gaborone, had received eight AfricaBikes. I drove out into a landscape as dry and deserted as Chihuahua, Mexico. When I arrived at the office, a white trailer on the edge of town, I didn't see a single bike outside. Perhaps all the counselors were already out doing their jobs. Across from the trailer was a storage shed. Curious, I walked over. The shed door beckoned, like the door in a horror film no one wants to open. Swinging the door wide open, I was aghast at discovering all eight bikes heaped in a pile, like corpses. They looked fine, brand new but for a film of red dust. Then I noticed the tires. Every bike had a flat.

That small portion of Botswana that's not an outright desert is a briar patch of what Botswanans call musu trees--thornbushes. Examining the tires, I found 2-inch thorns--mutlwas--piercing every one. By the time I came out of the shed, several of the counselors had appeared on foot.

"When we got the bikes, it was hallelujah!" Mpho Moselekalsi told me, earrings glistening as she threw back her elegantly shaved head.

Moselekalsi, 27, has been working for BOCAIP since 2001. Her specialty is child psychology; she counsels kids orphaned by AIDS. I asked her at what age she starts teaching children the facts of AIDS transmission.

"As soon as a child can talk," she replied. "The danger is so great." She has sleepy eyes and the most mellifluous voice I'd ever heard. I could imagine how soothing she was for bereft orphans.

"Walking, I could reach at most three places a day," she continued, "one home, one school, an orphanage. With the bike, I could reach six places a day, sometimes more. It was amazing. We were all more productive with the bikes. They must be mended."